To place it in context Nationally Endangered means two stops to extinction. Nationally critical means next stop – extinction.

Black-billed gulls, for example, are Nationally Critical – just one step from extinction. They don’t receive the same attention as iconic species like kiwis, and yet they are far more likely to vanish forever unless measures are taken, and taken very soon, to reverse this trend.

Declining is an early warning alarm, signalling something is wrong. Many birds and other species in this website that fall into this category, such as the white-fronted tern, are long lived. While the total number of birds might appear to be reasonably high, if insufficient juveniles are being recruited into the breeding population, once adults reach the end of their lifespan the population can drop catastrophically.

Fjordland

Research papers

Note: research papers on specific birds and rivers are listed under their respective pages Hughey et al (2009) Birdlife: Application of the river significance assessment method to the Canterbury region (480Kb PDF). Regional councils are faced with the task of identifying water bodies of importance in their region – there is no objective method for undertaking this evaluation. As part of developing a ‘tool’ to achieve this task this report applies the method for significance to:

Provide a case study of how to apply the method to birdlife in the rivers of the Canterbury region;

Provide a tool to enable regional councils, and others, to evaluate the value of their rivers to birdlife.